


In our hands, fire and light

by slugmutt



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bamba, F/M, Fluff, Hanukkah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 13:22:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16833457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slugmutt/pseuds/slugmutt
Summary: Rey has a perfectly good reason for breaking into the Hillel house at midnight. But what the hell is Ben Solo doing there?





	In our hands, fire and light

**Author's Note:**

> Did you ever have a story just pop into your head out of nowhere? Today I found myself thinking, "I did a Reylo Christmas story, but what if they were Jewish?" And then boom, this story appeared. So here it is, my version of the Reylo Holiday Story: Jewish Edition.

Rey has done some desperate things in the past to make sure she could light Hannukah candles. There was the year she pawned her nicest earrings in order to buy some cheap candles. There was the year she spent two weeks building her own menorah out of scrap metal late at night, after the shop was closed and Plutt was snoring in bed.

But breaking into the Hillel house at 11:45 at night is definitely the most desperate thing she’s done yet.

She can’t help a quick stab of guilt as she overrides the security system. It’s not like she’s going to do anything wrong, she tells herself. She just wants to light a menorah.

The little table where the menorahs sit bears the signs of a decent turnout, five hours ago when the official candle-lighting was held. The thick plastic table covering is coated in ten different colors of melted wax. At the far end of the table, a plate with a note urging students to “take one!" (followed by three smiley faces; she's guessing Rose wrote it) is sticky with little bits of sugar and red jelly.

No actual donuts left, but she wasn’t expecting any.

Rey lights the candles quickly. A little too quickly, as it turns out; she gets careless with the candle she’s using to light the menorah and drips hot wax down her fingers. A curse escapes her before she can think better of it.

“Amen,” says a dry voice from behind her, and Rey screams.

For a split second, all she can think of is serial killers and neo-Nazis, but then she turns and, “Oh. It’s you.”

Ben Solo looks unimpressed. But then, he always does.

She might actually be more surprised to see Ben here than… well, than anyone. Of course there are plenty of Jews who are atheist and still celebrate Hannukah. But Ben isn’t just an atheist. Ben is _the_ atheist. The one who spent the better part of a year bashing organized religion every week in the school paper, under the paper-thin pseudonym “Kylo Ren.”

The one whose column on Passover – in which he called it a celebration of racist hate that belonged in the garbage heap of history – was basically ten paragraphs bashing Rey personally, even if technically he didn’t mention her by name.

She scowls. “What are you doing here?” And how the hell was he able to sneak up on her like that? Nobody Kylo’s size should be able to sneak.

“Lighting a menorah.”

She raises a single eyebrow at him. Well, she tries, anyway. She never really got the trick of doing just one. “In case you didn’t notice, the menorah lighting was hours ago.”

He raises a single eyebrow at her. Which of course he can do perfectly. Dick.

“And yet, here you are,” he points out.

“I just got off shift,” she says, defensive. “What’s your excuse?”

He just crosses his arms and waits.

For a moment, she considers telling him to leave. Or just standing there and staring him down. But she’s too nice to do that, or maybe just too curious. Ben Solo celebrating a holiday, without a gun to his head? This ought to be interesting. So she steps away from the table and watches.

He lights the candles quickly and steps back as if he thinks they might burn him. He shoves his hands in his pockets, the look on his face less irritation and more something else, something that she might almost call embarrassment. If she thought Ben Solo was capable of feeling shame.

“Thanks,” he says awkwardly. There’s a long silence. “Can I drive you back to the dorms?” he asks, hesitant. She gives him a look of disbelief. “It’s late,” he points out.

“I’m staying here.”

There he goes, showing off his single-eyebrow lift again. “It’s midnight. You look tired.” She scowls again. Ben Solo, charming as ever.

“We can’t leave the candles unattended,” she points out. “It’s a fire hazard.” He sighs, running a hand down his face. “I’m staying,” she says. “You don’t have to.” _Please don’t_ goes unsaid.

He nods once, quickly, and heads for the door. Rey rolls her eyes. Of course he’s not going to wish her goodnight like a normal person.

She sits on one of the old cushioned chairs and curls her feet under her, watching the flames. Maybe she should be nervous, all alone in the dark building, but instead it feels warm and strangely peaceful.

At least, it does until Ben Solo appears out of fucking nowhere, _again_.

“What the hell?” she manages, once she’s breathing again. “How do you do that?”

He has the grace to look apologetic. “Sorry. People tell me I can be weirdly quiet. I don’t do it on purpose.”

“Why are you still here?” It’s blunt to the point of rude, but then, she’s been awake since six in the morning and she’s way too tired for this shit. And anyway, he’s said worse to her.

“I thought I’d keep you company.” He seems to realize how little appeal his company holds in itself, because he holds out hands full of snacks. “I brought food.”

She should tell him to leave. But dinner was half a sandwich she managed to stuff in her mouth at some point between the 3 pm coffee rush and the 5 pm coffee rush, and she’s starving. And Kylo has potato chips, and donuts, and… is that bamba? She loves bamba.

“Where did you get all this?” she asks a few seconds later, her mouth already full of food. When she looks at Kylo, he looks almost as if he’s hiding a smile.

“Leftovers from my mom’s Hannukah party,” he says.

Right. His mom, Leia Organa. Long-time rights activist, university president, and Rey’s personal hero. Also, one of the reasons she resents Ben, if she’s completely honest with herself. How could someone with a mother like that end up so bitter?

“Thanks,” she says. Now, with a bit of food in her stomach, she realizes just how hungry she was before.

“You’re welcome,” he says, and she tries not to stare in shock. Ben Solo, being polite. This might be more surprising than the whole Hannukah thing.

“So you’re really into Hannukah, huh?” He’s sitting in the chair next to hers, now, elbows on his knees, one foot tapping the floor while he looks straight at her. It’s a little disconcerting being on the receiving end of his attention, she remembers now. He’s so intense. But right here, right now, somehow it doesn’t seem like a bad thing.

Still. “Don’t make fun,” she says, automatic.

His lips flatten into a line. “I wasn’t,” he says, and then, “I’m sorry, you know. About what I wrote.”

She has to fight to keep her mouth from dropping open. Who is this man, and what has he done to Ben Solo?

And what is she supposed to say now? Because what he did was too big for a simple “I’m sorry.” She trusted him. She _liked_ him. And he turned around and mocked her, made her look like a naïve little idiot blindly following the flock. And it doesn’t matter if nobody else knew he was talking about her, _she_ did.

But he does look sincere. Sad, even. And, now that she’s thinking about it, he hasn’t written anything truly unkind in the past few months. Not that she’s been following his column or anything.

He sees her hesitation. “I mean it. I really am sorry.” A pause. “Come on, it’s the season of forgiveness.”

She rolls her eyes. “That’s Yom Kippur, dumbass.”

The corner of his mouth lifts. “So you’ll be getting in your forgiveness early for Yom Kippur 2019.”

She grabs a donut and takes a bite, still thinking it over. She can’t help moaning as the taste of fried dough and jelly fills her mouth. The donut is perfect - crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, and with plenty of filling. President Organa buys the good stuff, apparently.

Ben’s eyes are wide when she looks over, and he swallows with an audible gulp. “Um,” he says.

“I forgive you,” she says, licking powdered sugar off her fingers. “As long as you give me another donut.”

His answering smile is wide and bright and adorable, and suddenly Rey finds herself remembering just why she liked him so much the first time.

She knows better than to make that mistake again. But for whatever reason, as the candles burn lower, she finds herself really and truly enjoying his company.

Of course, that could just be the bottle of kosher wine they’ve been passing between themselves for the past thirty minutes.

“No really, I was going to be a rabbi,” he says as she stifles a laugh of disbelief. “My uncle’s a rabbi, and I wanted to be just like him.”

_So what the hell happened?_ She doesn’t say it, but he must see it on her face, because he sighs and says, “Until he found me reading The God Delusion and reacted as if I’d killed someone.” He pauses, thinking. “I guess I’d been changing for a while before that, though.”

“So is that why…?” She can’t bring herself to finish the sentence, but she doesn’t have to.

“That was my editor,” he says. “He said that controversy sells papers. So, you know. The more extreme, the better.” He stares at his hands. “No matter who it hurts.”

There’s a lot to unpack there, so much that all she can manage is, “Isn’t the student paper free?”

“Yeah, a lot of what Snoke said was stupid,” he says. “I’m editor now, though, so – maybe I can make things better.” He raises the half-empty wine bottle. “Here’s to new beginnings,” he says, looking almost shy.

Rey raises her donut. “To new beginnings.”

“Seriously,” he says some time later, after they finish ranting about the latest Star Wars movie. “Are you always this into Hannukah? I mean, I know you’re one of the organizers here – “ she blinks, because she’s only been organizing prayer services for a couple of months now, and how did he know that? “- but breaking in at midnight seems to be taking it a bit far.”

She may not hate him as much as she thought she did – she might even be starting to like him, just a little – but some things are personal. So she just shrugs. “You’re here too.”

He seems to take her non-answer seriously. For a long moment he’s quiet, dark eyes flickering with reflected flame. “I’m here because of my father,” he finally says, and something in his tone warns her that this is not an easy topic.

“Hannukah is important to him?” she asks, gently.

“No. He wasn’t Jewish, actually.” Rey’s stomach sinks at his use of the past tense. “But, well,” Ben shakes his head. “My mom was important to him. Despite everything. So, uh. I’m trying to be less of a dick to her. For his sake.” He lifts his eyes to hers and tries for a smile, but it falls flat. “So I’m celebrating the holidays this year, among other things. It makes her happy.”

There’s another silence, and she fights an absurd urge to take his hand. “My mom gave me up for adoption,” she blurts out.

And then, because that’s not quite the truth, “You know those centers where parents can drop off children, if they can’t care for them properly?” He nods, his eyes on her. “Well, London didn’t have any of those. So my mom just kind of… made her own.” She has no idea why she’s telling him this. She can count the number of people who know this story on one hand. “I don’t remember much about her. Well, anything about her, really. But she wrote this whole form up for me, with my age and height and everything, and she put ‘Jewish’ for my religion, and… I guess it helped, sometimes, thinking maybe she and I had that in common.”

She used to imagine that as she lit whatever pathetic candles she had scrounged up, somewhere, her mother was doing the same. When she was a little older she knew that might not be true. Told herself that her mother had probably died of an overdose long ago. Still, lighting the candles helped, somehow.

“So yeah,” she finishes, voice almost a whisper. “I’m really into Hannukah.”

Ben clears his throat. “As excuses for breaking into the Hillel house go, that’s a really good one.”

She manages a laugh despite the lump in her throat, and smiles as he passes her the wine.

Thankfully, the conversation gets lighter after that.

“I can’t believe you think the Greeks should have won,” she tells him. “That’s the opposite of the point, here.”

“I didn’t say they should have won,” he says, and has his voice always been so low and smooth and perfect? Rey decides she should maybe stop drinking. “I just said that Greek civilization wasn’t so bad. Now the Romans,” he adds, “They deserved to win. A single, united Empire bringing technology and philosophy to the wilderness? That was a good idea. Well executed, too.”

She’s not sure if he’s just teasing or if he really believes it. “Just don’t let Ido hear you say that,” she warns, before remembering he might not have met this year’s Israel Fellow yet.

Ben smirks. “I can take him,” he says. He probably could, too. Maybe he doesn’t have military experience, but Ben looks like he could lift Ido up one-handed. She blushes, and decides to think about something else. Anything else.

“Is there any more bamba?”

He passes it to her, wrinkling his nose. “I don’t know how you can eat that stuff.”

She swats his arm. Which turns out to be a terrible idea, because it’s one thing knowing that his arms are huge and toned, and another thing feeling it. “Bamba is delicious,” she says, hoping it’s too dark for her blush to show.

“It’s peanut-flavored Styrofoam,” he counters.

She throws one at him, and he laughs. It makes him unfairly attractive. He should laugh more often, she thinks. Or maybe less, because it’s kind of a lot to handle.

Half of the candles are out, now, and the ones that are left are sputtering feebly in pools of wax.

“So what are you doing after this?” she asks. The look he gives her is confused, and tired, and oddly hopeful. But mostly just confused.

“It’s two in the morning, Rey. I’m going to sleep after this.”

“No, but like,” she waves a hand. “For the rest of Hannukah.”

He shrugs. “Lighting more candles. Who knows, maybe I’ll even eat a latke.” He looks at her out of the corner of his eye. “Why? Planning to do this again tomorrow?”

She wasn’t, but now that he mentions it… “Shit. I have the evening shift again tomorrow.” And an eight am class tomorrow morning. She wants to cry, she really does.

Ben clears his throat. “I could meet you here again. If that’s OK. I’ll bring food,” he adds quickly.

Her smile, when it comes, is huge and bright and real. “I’d like that.”

When he comes the next night, he’s carrying a plate full of latkas that are somehow still piping hot, and another two donuts. Which is good, because it makes it easy to pretend that her excitement is about the food.

On the fifth night, she lights candles at a normal hour with the rest of the Hillel regulars, and is almost breathless from shock when he turns up, too, looking awkward but determined. It goes better than she had expected (meaning, there is shouting, but no bloodshed).

The sixth night is Shabbat. He shows up again, and even joins them in singing after the meal. His voice is every bit as perfect as she remembers, and she realizes that she likes him a bit more than she should. He walks her back to her dorm, and they stay awake talking until her roommate kicks them out, and yeah. She likes him way more than she should.

On the seventh night, he’s nowhere to be seen, and she’s not disappointed, she refuses to be disappointed.

On the eighth night he’s jittery and awkward and looks as if he’s about to jump out of his skin, and she wishes she knew what she did wrong. Until he asks if he can kiss her, and suddenly everything is bright and warm and perfect.

The taste of his lips on hers is better than anything, she decides.

The next year, they light candles in the apartment they rent together off campus. Rey’s always liked Hannukah, but she thinks this just might be the best one yet. 


End file.
